“Now, it’s none of my business, Mrs. Banger; but casting my eye over those graves to-day, it struck me that I might fix ’em up a little, so’s they’d be more comfortable like.  I think McFadden wants a few sods over the feet, and Smith’s headstone has worked a little out of plumb.  He’s settled some, I s’pose.  I think I’d straighten it up and put a gas-pipe railing around Mr. Smyth.  And while you’re about it, Mrs. Banger, hadn’t you better buy about ten feet beyond Mr. Smith, so’s there won’t be any scrouging when you bury the next one?  I like elbow-room in a cemetery lot, and I pledge you my word it’ll be a tight squeeze to get another one in there and leave room for you besides.  It can’t be done so’s to look anyways right, and I know you don’t want to take all four of ’em out and make ’em move up, so’s to let the rest of you in.  Of course it’d cut you up, and it’d cost like everything, too.

“When a person’s dead and buried, it’s the fair thing to let him alone, and not to go hustling him around.  That’s my view, any way; and I say that if I was you, sooner than put Mr. Smith on top of McFadden and Smyth on top of Smith, I’d buy in the whole reservation and lay ’em forty feet apart.

“And how is Mr. Banger?  Seem in pretty good health?  Do you think we are to have him with us long?  I hope so; but there’s consumption in his family, I believe.  Life is mighty uncertain.  We don’t know what minute we may be called.  I’m a forehanded kind of man, and while his wedding-suit was being made I just stepped into the tailor’s and ran it over with a tape-measure, so’s to get some idea of his size.  You’d hardly believe it, but I’ve got a black walnut casket at the shop that’ll fit him as exact as if it had been built for him.  It was the luckiest thing.  An odd size, too, and wider than we generally make them.  I laid it away up stairs for him, to be prepared in case of accident.  You’ve been so clever with me that I feel ’sif I ought to try my best to accommodate you; and I know how women hate to bother about such things when their grief is tearing up their feelings and they are fretting about getting their mourning-clothes in time for the funeral.

“And that’s partly what I called to see you about, Mrs. McFa—­Banger, I mean.  I’ve got a note to pay in the morning, and the man’s pushing me very hard; but I’m cleaned right out.  Haven’t got a cent.  Now, it occurred to me that maybe you’d advance me the money on Mr. Banger’s funeral if I’d offer you liberal terms.  How does fifteen per cent. strike you? and if he lives for six or seven years, I’ll make it twenty.  Mind you, I offer the casket and the best trimmings, eight carriages, the finest hearse in the county, and ice enough for three days in the swelteringest weather in August.  And I don’t mind—­well—­yes, I’ll even agree to throw in a plain tombstone.  If you can do that to accommodate a friend, why, I’ll—­No?  Don’t want to speculate on it?  Oh, very well; I’m sorry, because I know you’d been satisfied with the way I’d have arranged things.  But no matter; I s’pose I can go round and borrow elsewhere.  Good-morning; drop in some time, and I’ll show you that casket.”